I can honestly say that as secondary English teachers we thought we had it bad because we have had to implement the new style linear GCSE for 2017 almost overnight. The radical changes include:
- 100% examinations for both literature and language – and they both count to varying degrees and the school figures – just to add on even MORE pressure
- No coursework
- No Speaking and Listening for IGCSE
- No controlled assessments (Although I don’t think anyone is too sad to see these go.)
The full impact of these changes will not be fully appreciated until August 2017, when we see how the boards (Government??) decide how and when they are going to set the grade boundaries. We are all under no illusions any longer, we know we at the mercy of the government. The big question is to what extent they will want to prove their new style rigorous approach to exams is a success. How will they define success? Will it be how many students actually pass, and in this respect will they find it in their hardest of hearts to actually congratulate the English teachers for their determination to do the best by their students even in the most dire of circumstances. OR, will they decide that they want to confirm just how rigorous and difficult their new exam system is and make sure only the students who go to Eton get a grade 9, leaving the rest of the plebs languish in the grade 3/4/5 boundary, ensuring they can still scrape into a college or university. We will just have to wait and see! No one has had the heart or inclination to fight all of this – it has been a case of just let us see how we can adapt.
Are employers aware?
We also the first cohort in 2017 having a grade 4 allocated as a grade C equivalent, whereas the 2018 cohort will need to get a grade 5 as a C equivalent. Are employees going to have to check the date on an application form to check that the student sat the examination in a particular year to verify the achievements of their applicants? Do they realise that the 2017 students will have number grades for English and Maths, but the old style A*-C for the rest of their GCSEs? Do the students even understand this? Especially with the bizarre transition from levels in numbers to grades in numbers – where in effect some students will be a 5 in one form or another for the entire duration of their secondary education. Employees seem to have NO idea what is happening in education, and I suspect that the universities don’t have any real idea either.
The Travesty at KS2
The ultimate in sympathy in all of these changes needs to be extended to the Year 6 teachers – they are dealing with transitions in both Maths and English – and only received exemplar materials designed to show them how to teach over the past two years, in the February of this academic year, three months before the tests. In these materials the government have provided interim criteria that needs to be applied this year only! As well as coping with ‘assessment without levels’. The madness in English includes:
- Grammar tests – learning artificially created grammar terms for no real reason, other than to make the tests ‘measurable’, and easier to mark.
- Spelling tests, of lists of words provided by the government – lots of rote learning, learning words out of context, a process that is ultimately proven to be futile.
- Hand-writing – in a world of IT, smart phones and voice recognition? According to the government, neat handwriting is now the most precise indicator of someone’s intelligence.
- ‘Secretarial skills’ are being heavily promoted – ie the recording of information, not the interpretation of information and language. There no longer needs to be any awareness of reader or sense of purpose when students write. Unbelievable!
Students need to learn English by rote to fulfil an artificial criteria created by – the best grammarians in the world? No! The grammarians, English experts and Educationists all abandoned the sinking ship of the English education system a long time ago, in fear of association with a regime that would, in effect, destroy their career. Consequently, we have the only alternative left to the government, faceless and nameless civil servants merrily creating havoc by making up terms and approaches, and then merrily uploading their nonsense onto the DFE website. If anyone could actually pinpoint what was exactly going on there would be, and legitimately should be, a major rebellion in our midst.
The Frontal Adverbial
What is a frontal adverbial? Can you believe that many English teachers are in fact asking themselves the same question? Michael Rosen has written a brilliantly eloquent campaign that singles out the frontal adverbial for a special mention for the madness that is KS2 literacy. The civil servants have excelled themselves in creating terms and creating approaches to ensure our children have a firm grounding in a 1950’s approach to teaching, and they have combined this with a whole new set of terms for literacy that no one understands. The frontal adverbial is a particular favourite, and fully deserves a special mention.
Benefits?
The ONLY benefit is that it will make the previous teaching regimes seem like a breeze. We need to either:
- Get down on our knees and beg and plead for this to stop
Or
- Stand up and protest and shout and scream for this to stop
Or
BOTH.
We must enforce a collective change and stop this madness before:
- We lose years of outstanding teaching practice and resources almost overnight
- We lose thousands of outstanding teachers from the profession almost overnight
Unfortunately, (note my use of a ‘frontal adverbial’) we seem powerless to stop all of this. Teachers are brow beaten and demoralised and have to decide between fighting for the profession, or ensuring their students jump through the right educational hoops. And far too often the students come first – and rightly so, but such passivity has no long term benefits for either students or teaching.
Is it time to challenge?
The one thing we all NEED is the unions to UNITE – it will never get anywhere when they point score against each other rather than point scoring for children. We need ONE collective voice to stand up to this utter madness. We also need parents to wake up – this is not about getting your child into the ‘best; most ‘outstanding’ school. If all of this continues, no matter where your child goes to school they will struggle to find outstanding staff. No one with any integrity can teach this nonsense and produce well rounded, well-grounded students. As teachers, we can no longer pretend that what we are doing is for the students, for the community, for the integrity for the profession. If we all stand back and let all of this happen we are facing doom as a profession, and I dread to think of what will become of our children – both now, and in the future. Everyone needs to stand against this – teachers, parents, students, business people, UNIONS. We cannot risk losing decades of hard work and experience from teaching, it is time for us all to unite!